


Paradoxical

by Sysnix



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dimension Travel, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Spell Failure, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 23:39:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3997534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sysnix/pseuds/Sysnix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Trying to send him to a specific place is sort of like ... like ... trying to hit a ... puppy, by throwing a live bee at it." Only in this case we're talking about a her, Vampire Willow. And it takes everyone with her.</p><p>Diverges from canon at the spell to send Vampire Willow back to her own dimension.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

The last thing Willow remembered was kneeling in the circle to send her vampire doppelganger back to her own dimension. This had to be yet another dimension since her doppelganger was sitting right next to her at high noon. 

"Morning, Fuzzy."

"Oh boy." Willow's hand flew to her pain-filled neck and found it bloody. "You bit me?"

"Tried to turn you but it looks like that works differently here."

"Where are we? When are we?" Willow asked as she got to her feet and took in her surroundings. It looked like Earth, but old Earth, Victorian Era and England.

"It doesn't matter. We should find a nice home to take over. I've heard stories about careless vampires."

"I agree on blending in, but we aren't killing anyone."

"You do what you want, and I'll do what I want. A game to see who lives and who dies before we get to our respective worlds."

"I need to find my friends." But Willow was talking to herself since her vampire self walked off.

* * *

"What the hell?" Angel asked when he showed up with Xander, Oz, and Buffy in his hometown in the middle of the day. If the apothecary on the corner was anything to go by then they'd arrived before he'd turned ten. He hurried Buffy, Xander, and Oz into an alley to avoid being seen by locals. 

Xander threw his hands up. "Of course the spell went wrong. With me in the vicinity nothing else coulda happened." 

"Xander, shh." Buffy held his gaze until she was sure he'd be quiet. "Angel? I'm looking for ideas."

"I don't think Xander's wrong," Oz said keeping his tone low.

"Me either." Angel sighed. "We need to find a way home."

"We need to find the others first." Buffy leaned against the wall. "And we need to blend until we figure everything out."

"You mean breeches and stockings?" Xander asked trying to be quiet with his alarm.

"I found them comfortable in my day. The bigger problem is money. We have none." Angel considered this. "I have an idea, but I don't like it."

"And that idea is?" Buffy asked.

"My father's money. I know how to get at it. If we're where I think we are that is."

* * *

Anya slapped Giles across the face over and over until he woke up. "Finally."

When he saw they were in the middle of a village from before paper, he groaned. "Where are we?"

"The village I lived in when I was mortal the first time."

"Where are the others?" Giles asked as he sat up.

She shrugged. "Not here. We need to get moving before someone notices us."

"Right you are."


	2. Chapter 1

Another party, another deja vu moment of seeing what would someday become Spike if Willow didn't stop it. She hadn't even talked to him, not beyond asking him if he'd like more to eat or drink. With a deep breath, she decided now would be best. The sight of a redhead with him stopped her. And she felt sick when she saw who that woman was and growled low.

When the doppelganger winked at Willow, she ran into a guest when she turned, covering his suit with red wine. "I'm so sorry. I'll, oh, sir, I'll fetch you another suit."

"Miss Rose, you'll do nothing more than leave this house at once and never return. You'll get no reference from me."

"Mr. Underwood, please. I need this job." Finding employment had been difficult, losing this would ensure not finding another legal job. "You hate this suit anyway. Let me get you cleaned up."

He grabbed her arm and dragged her out of the house and threw her into the street. "I'll sell your things to pay for the uniform you wear."

Not wanting to be seen crying, Willow stood up, dusted her dress off, and walked away. The footsteps behind her were familiar. "What do you want, evil me?"

"To lend a hand." Vampire Willow stood in the other's way with a piece of paper in hand. "Go here and you might find work as something other than a whore. Consider it a consolation prize for losing William."

"Fine, I got the message, can I go now?"

The vampire leaned in close. "He is delicious. You'd be amazed. William's almost as good at eating a woman out as other women are."

"Keep this conversation up and I'll find a way to die. There's gotta be something we haven't tried." She looked at the sky, hoping an answer would rain from the heavens.

"I'd love to keep trying, but we exhausted every method available right now."

"How long have we been here? Six years?"

"Almost seven." The two Willows walked down the immaculate London streets together.

"You know, you're not only my nemesis, but my best friend too."

"Don't give me cavities." The vampire pushed Willow in jest and Willow pushed the vampire back. "Did you know the Master's in town?"

"For how long?"

"As far as I can tell since a week before we got here."

"Wanna kill him?" Willow asked.

"I'll help you kill him if you help me cover up turning William without making me move."

"I'll think about it."

* * *

"You've got to be kidding me!" Xander screamed. "We've been living in the woods for how many years now? Just to make sure we cause no weird butterfly problems, and you're telling me we're still affecting too much? I learned archery, skinned and gutted animals I've killed, and then ate them. I haven't had anything that didn't taste like smoke and charred wood in over a decade. All I drink is water. And not just me but all of us. How are we making waves?"

Angel stifled a groan. "I heard some hunters talking today about how they found our cabin. We need to become nomadic if we don't want to create a horrible future for ourselves. Since we know that vampires here are the same, and I'm the only anomaly, we have to work on the assumption that this world is our world. Now pack."

"Buffy?"

"Oz and Angel made this decision and I don't know enough about time travel or dimensional travel spells to know where we are or how we got here. Until there's definitive proof of this being our dimension or a different one, I have to rely on their knowledge of magic and physics. It is physics, right?"

"Right." Oz agreed as he packed his bedroll.

"How are we going to find out if we don't go into the world sometimes?"

"I don't know, but what else can we do?" Buffy touched Xander's arm, but he pulled away.

"I think the reason you're on his side is that you two can go at it like bunnies, consequence free, and you don't care about anything else. Certainly not anyone else."

"Xander?"

Xander huffed away and packed what he could carry. As he was packing he found Angel's emergency stash. When he left out the back, Xander mentally apologized for stealing the last of daddy dearest's money.

After five days of walking, and before he got to civilization, Xander traded his leathers for his blending in clothes. Between the money he stole and his skill with wood and hunting, Xander felt sure he could make a life for himself. He'd felt like a slashed flat tire in their group anyway what with Oz shaking up with Angel and Buffy. It was like because he didn't have super powers, he didn't have desires according to them. He was sick of being the only one not getting laid.

A tavern looked like a good place to find some food, drink, and company. His step gleeful, Xander went and made with the merry happy that every history book was wrong about the hygiene thing. 

When he noticed the human version of Angel, he paused for a second before ignoring Liam's existence. He wouldn't stop Angel from getting turned. He was on board the keep the future the same train that far, but he wouldn't avoid the drunken lout either.

* * *

"Anya, it's been over a hundred years hasn't it? Can't we let the subject drop?" Giles asked as they walked through the next village of what would one day be called Sweden. "I'm tired of apologizing."

"You should grovel at my feet every day, Rupert. You were the one that found the spell. You're the one that got us stuck in times so far back that there's zero chance of us not screwing up the future somehow. And neither of us can do magic. None, nada, zip, zilch. And being my orgasm friend doesn't get you off the hook." Anya sighed.

"At least no one speaks English around here or they'd set us on fire. I don't want to go through that again." Giles held a chipped and scratched lens to his eye. "It appears we found what we were looking for."

"Blind old codger, that's not what we were looking for. I could see how you made the mistake though." Anya approached the trader and spoke to him in his native tongue. "Do you have anything other than rabbit meat?"

Giles found a log to sit on. The recent rain made the ground a wholly unpleasant seat. He couldn't wait until the advent of spectacles, having never been so aware of his poor vision as he'd been for the last fifty years. When he lost the other lens to glasses whose frames had become unusable, he never recovered from the blow. He needed a walking stick just to keep from hurting himself or anyone else.

Anya sat next to him, obvious that it was her by her lack of BO compared to everyone else. He laughed to himself. "We should teach people about proper hygiene."

"Sure, right after we teach them about bacteria and microbes. He had some deer jerky not on display. I traded him a remedy for sore throats and got enough to last a week. I don't understand how these people still overdo the rabbit diet. The stupid fluffers kill more people. I hate them." She handed him a strip.

"You're terrified of them."

"That spell more than messed up. The logistics make no sense. We don't age, nothing kills us, we heal super fast, I can't get pregnant, but we can get sick, and if we don't eat well, we get weak. And again, no magic to get back." Anya stopped talking to chew off a piece of her jerky.

Giles refrained from replying. They'd been over this a trillions of times, and it led nowhere except her leaving him helpless for months. He swore she liked to be angry since she was rarely anything else.

A man sat on the other side of Anya whose odor was so offensive they both put their jerky in their bags. "Maybe we could try to teach them the finer points of cleanliness."

"I'd prefer not to be downwind of anyone when we do if you don't mind."

"Agreed."


	3. Chapter 2

Hand between the knees of the latest wannabe not a mother, Willow sighed. Menstrual extractions weren't complicated, but they posed a risk. Antibiotics helped but Willow worried that the early invention would lead to resistance to the drug a lot sooner than they'd find an alternative. The struggle for women's rights was ongoing though, and she had little opportunity to research. 

"Madame Laurel, could you make up a necessity kit for this one? She's almost done. And get Spike to take her home if he's back from his duties with the renters. If not then help her get three blocks away and ring a cab." When Willow was finished with the woman in front of her, she smiled. "Take the antibiotics the way I instructed and you should be fine. You can pay the Madame when she gives you the kit."

Willow cleaned up and sterilized the equipment while she listened to Laurel tell the woman what everything was for in her kit. Oral medication, a diaphragm, some herbal teas if they miss another period, and a book about the female reproductive system. They left without Spike, so she waited for him to return, relaxing with music on the victrola. 

When Spike showed up it was dawn. "Report?"

"Word's gotten out. The only renters work for your Madames and are protected from harm by hired thugs. That pimp who tried to invade your territory has been terminated. He's the only casualty of the night. And Will?"

"Yes."

"Willow wants to see you for breakfast, so look respectable, or at least pick a gender." He toed off his boots, hung his coat up, and disappeared downstairs to sleep with the other vampires that looked over her employees.

With hair cut close to her head, Willow passed as a man when she had to consort with the rich. While in the hollow, she dressed however she pleased, mix and matching male and female clothes. So she changed into her suit and got the remains of the procedures out of the icebox and into the cooler.

Her horse was easier to maneuver through the streets than the car, so she took him. Her arrival at the Addams estate was met by the hostess. "Hello Willow, how are you doing this fine morning?"

"Tired of being stuck in these primitive times. Have you learned why your magic isn't working, Will?"

"That willing to give up invulnerability?"

"There's no risk, so I'm immensely bored. God, I even sound like I belong here. You must do something." Willow looked at the cooler. "Is that a big or small breakfast?"

"Medium, but it should do you for the day." The women walked through the front door. "You gotten any closer to gaining the Master's trust?"

"The bastard is more careful now than I remember. It's bizarre. He could tell I was his, but no matter how many times I tell him what happened he's leery of me. Doesn't easily trust creatures from other dimensions or times." She accepted the cooler as they sat in the dining room. "Uterine linings and fetuses might be worth not killing innocent people. I've tasted nothing sweeter."

"Well the women are just happy to not bear unwanted children. Hurts no one for you to reap some benefits." Willow crossed her ankle over her knee. "So tell me, what have you heard about our boy? Have any of your contacts heard anything? Mine haven't."

"Turns out he's determined to modernize war tactics of the oppressed while working through legal channels at the same time. And he's yours not mine. Mine wouldn't risk exposure. He wouldn't work with things so low as politicians. And how are our inventions coming? I can line up some new frontmen for us whenever you need."

"The inventions are great. Big for my taste but there's not much I can do about that yet. I need large equipment before I can make smaller versions. You going to get your hands dirty this week and help out?" She got up and poured herself some whiskey then lit a cigarette.

"If I have time. My 'mother' has taken ill and I need to make a show of looking after her. I don't think we can stay in London for more than another year. People are talking. They talk about how uncanny the resemblance is between me and my mother and my grandmother before her." Willow sipped her red liquid breakfast. "This batch is perfection. No impurities in the blood."

"Two upperclass women. I'm sure you know them since they commented on how much we look alike."

"Do tell!"

"You know I won't."

"Fine. I'll hit you with the bad news then." She paused to pick her words. "If we're going to kill the Master, I need to do something big for him. Darla insists that he likes parties. The kind with a lot of human victims. But I will not piss in my cornflakes and cross you."

"You don't want to end up in a dozen boxes buried miles away from each other again." Running fingers through her short hair, Willow pondered the problem. "No one under sixteen and no one under my protection, but if we're not staying much longer then we need to dust him sooner rather than later. And we need to make a plan for the businesses left behind. I'm not leaving those people unprotected."

"I have an idea about that. Give me a week and I should have an exceptional plan in place. You must promise to make it to the next ball. Bring your little girlfriend if you want. Should make for a wonderful scene."

"Everyone still thinks I'm your brother?"

"They do. People see what they want. You know that as well as I do."

* * *

Angel, Oz and Buffy sat in the inn watching the surrounding people. "Is this how you remember it?" Buffy asked.

"No. Women had little standing when I was alive. Nothing like this at all. I have a theory about why these changes are happening."

"Don't keep us in suspense." Oz sipped his tea.

"I think some of us, the ones there for the spell, got sent back even farther. Far enough that they couldn't help disturbing the timeline." Angel sighed. "And Xander's been making substantial changes too."

"Well all of us have so much future knowledge any of us could make a killing. We could be super rich and powerful. But other than Xander, who do you think would make these changes?" Buffy asked as she picked at her lard soaked breakfast.

Oz shrugged. "It could be anyone. The emphasis on education we've seen could be Giles or Willow, and the women's rights could be Willow or Anya considering her kill men tendencies."

"The good news is we're probably not in our home dimension. Things are so changed that at least one of you probably don't get born. If we were in own universe one of you would've disappeared by now." Angel twisted his knife on its point.

"What if there was another one of us that has disappeared? Someone with us that has already disappeared? Would we remember them?" Buffy asked.

"Wouldn't happen that way. If we're in our home dimension, we're really not. As soon as we ended up back in time a fork got made. We created a new river in time. Even if we never get born, we'll be fine."

"Huh?"

"The future us that may not get born are more like clones of us but they aren't really us."

"So their fates have no effect on anyone thrown back through the spell. Interesting." Angel sat back and pondered the physics and philosophical implications.

"I understood that one. I blame it on being stuck here for over a century. How did you do this the first time around, Angel? The lard alone is too much." She dropped her fork on her plate.

"I was born into this, and then I was a vampire." 

"But no more woods?" Buffy asked. "I mean if we're in a different timeline, why stay hidden?"

"She has a point, big guy." 

"You're willing to risk more change?" Angel asked. "Both of you?"

Buffy dropped her napkin on her plate. "At this point we need to make changes. Oz is super smart with electronics, you're great with people, and I've got a keen fashion sense. Between the three of us, we could rule. Or at least improve things."

"I'm with her." Oz said. 

"We should find Xander." Buffy dropped to a whisper. "He's probably feeling alone with no one who knows he's from...." 

A man walking by stopped and addressed them with a thick Scottish accent. "Did you just say you were looking for Xander?"

"Yeah, I guess that's not a common name right now."

"I can take you to a man that knows all about him. You must show respect though. The great Xander freed Scotland, and I'll not listen to anyone speak ill of him."

"We'd never speak ill of such a great man, would we?" Angel asked the other two as he stood up.

"Never. We revere him and his legacy." Buffy nodded and stood up as well.

"As they go." Oz also stood up, leaving coin on the table.

"Well then, follow me. His son's putting together his own campaign to free even more people from oppression. His ideas sound radical at first, but hear him out for he takes after his father." The man bowed. "My name's Kirk, seems to tickle young Mr. Harrison. And who might you be?"

"My name is Elizabeth but everyone calls me Buffy, and these are Liam and Daniel." Buffy didn't let her disgust for the name Elizabeth show. She wasn't an Elizabeth, she was a Buffy. 

"Will the lady honor me by allowing me to escort her?" Kirk bent his elbow.

"I knew Mr. Harrison when I was a child, his favorite stories were about a man named Kirk that lived in the stars." Buffy threaded her arm through his. "His son loved those stories as well if I recall."

The four left the inn took a carriage to a home in the next town. They'd been greeted by a woman in her late forties. She lit up when she heard their names. "He'll be delighted to see you all again. We've been in the area specifically looking for you. Thank you for bringing them Kirk, but Alex would like to meet with them alone. Give them privacy to catch up."

"Of course ma'am." Kirk bowed and left. 

"I'm Margret, Xander's wife. He's told me so much about all of you. He's been searching for the others, Giles and Willow as well but has had little in the way of luck."

Xander walked up behind his wife and kissed her cheek. "We hate it but these days Margret passes as my mother to the outside world and I'm my own son or you know, something."

She pressed her forehead to his cheek. "I can't believe he stays with an old hag like me."

"We've talked about this. You're not old, or a hag of any kind. You're gorgeous and I wish I could get old with you." He kissed her lips. "And these are my friends, my real friends, and we don't have to pretend around them. We can just be the married couple we are."

Buffy stepped forward. "He's right. You're gorgeous and if Xander's doing this well, you must be brilliant. How have you kept him from falling all over himself?"

"It hasn't been easy let me tell you. He seems to gravitate to the idiotic actions, but he listens when I tell him he's about to make a big mista-------------" Margret disappeared.

Xander's devastation was compounded by the sudden shift in their surroundings. Buffy, Angel, and Oz all found themselves rattled to their core at the shift in the world. "Another timeline?"

* * *

Giles and Anya had been freeing slaves in the Middle East when the world melted into something they hadn't seen before in their entire existences.

* * *

"Didn't we just killed the Master?" Spike asked as he saw the oozing pitch around them.

"We did," Willow said. "Will please explain this."

"Um, I'm thinking."

"Well is there a reason for this or not?" Spike grabbed Will by the shoulders begging for an explanation.

"Not a scientific one as far as I know. But is that guy over there the Master? As a human?" Will pointed to a naked man bowing to a demon the size of the Chrysler Building. "His chanting sounds like the Master's voice. Willow, you agree?"

"Ugh, it does. That's him as a human? He's so scrawny. Can I eat him and put him out of everyone's misery?"

"I don't see why not, but let's feel things out first."

Spike kept his eyes on their environment. The cloud high monsters ignoring their existence, the lack of solid ground. "Are these the dinosaurs you spoke of?"

"No, these are what will one day be known as the Old Ones. They exist in a pocket of time that will become magically sealed from scientific study. It's a part of history I only know about from magical texts. After the dinosaurs and during millennia of the first humans that no one knows about. This is when demons mingle their blood with humans because they see the writing on the wall. They see they can't keep their purchase on this world, and produce progeny that will stop at nothing to bring back their ancestors. The ancestors banished to other dimensions and connected to this one through hard to open portals and hellmouths. This for lack of a better term is the beginning of the end of hell on Earth." Will looked at Willow and Spike. "And we can change things for the better. Make it even harder to bring this back. Save this dimension if the others don't end up back even farther than us."

"Did she just make an argument for saving the world that we agree with?" Willow asked Spike. 

"She did. But to be fair she had help. This is not my idea of a permanent vacation locale."

"Me either. And we're stuck here for the foreseeable future." Willow pouted. "I miss my world. Chains and pony rides."

"So how far back did we go?" 

"Approximately, two hundred thousand years."


	4. Chapter 3

Whatever happened, their world turned into a sci-fi nightmare. None of them knew how anything worked. It took all four of them an hour to open the door, only to find that they were infringing on the space of a family of cyborgs. 

Outside Buffy gasped. "It smells so nice."

"It does, but we've got big problems." Oz took in their surroundings. "We don't exactly fit in."

Angel and Xander said the same thing at the same time. "They're all robots."

"Well parts of them are." Oz noticed all the biological bits on the people staring at them. They weren't menacing, but they were all surprised to see people without metal bits.

"Is this even Earth?" Buffy asked.

"Well the foliage looks like Earth," Oz said as they all swiveled their heads around to take it all in.

Xander had a war going on in his heart. His inner sci-fi nerd was ecstatic, but his wife wasn't here and her loss took all the wonder and joy out of things. They had no place in this world and while he'd love the challenge, without Margret he didn't want to bother. 

Angel didn't think he'd see this kind of world so soon. The buildings were metal and glass with green tiles covering half them. The pavement was made of some material he'd never seen. This was a metropolitan and yet there was plant life everywhere. The air smelled of dozens of different types of flowers. The cars made soft sounds like a cat's purr, and the bubbling noise was water and people talking in a language he'd never heard but reminded him of the Gaelic he'd grown up with.

Buffy couldn't take her eyes off the clothing. Some people wore next to nothing while others were covered head to toe, and yet they all looked comfortable and gorgeous at the same time. There wasn't a high heel in sight, and the more she absorbed the more she saw that the metal parts of the people here were perfect. Everything here was both ornamental and functional at the same time. There were sleek and minimal in their designs stuff, and other complex and intricate things with everything in between too. This place for all its science felt magical.

Oz took it all in stride since no one attacked them or said anything to them. "This could be cool."

* * *

Anya and Giles sat in the middle of the square, finding it amazing that no one appeared to be oppressed suddenly. The technology was far beyond what either of them had ever seen before. 

"Huh," Anya said. "I think someone ended up really really far back. Willow probably since she's got that eidetic memory."

"But why the change? Wouldn't the world have been like this already if she ended up that far back?" The eyes on them weren't threatening, so he ignored them.

"Something magic happened. Could be anything. A witch, or a demon, or she killed the wrong demon, or she hit a thin spot and got sucked back." Anya sighed. "So what do we do now?"

"We need to blend in." 

"Why? No one seems to care that we don't look like we belong here."

A person of indiscernible gender approached them and said something. They smiled in a questioning manner, but Anya and Giles did not understand what they were trying to say.

The communication devolved into pantomiming until Anya figured out what the person was trying to say. "They want to know if we need help. And we do so maybe we should go with them?"

Giles rubbed his forehead. "They could be luring us into a trap."

"Well what do you propose?"

"I don't know."

"They're friendly. We should see where they take us. If it looks suspicious, we'll bolt." Anya nodded at the person and pulled Giles along as she followed them down the gleaming street.

* * *

The Wills sat in their mansion, wide awake and eating ice cream. Spike asked, "How'd you two remember all that stuff?"

"Eidetic memory." The Willows said in unison.

"And more time reading than doing anything else." Will said, her hair still short and her bionic eyes gleaming. "The only reason I couldn't skip grades was because I spent so much time studying things that weren't for class."

"Are we the only demons left in the world, you think?" Spike asked.

"Mostly. Angel's probably around somewhere, but the Old Ones are still in their tombs. And then there's the random portals." Willow sighed. "But we're better than we ever were before, don't you think?"

"We're perfect now and getting more perfect with every upgrade." Spike grinned. "Who thought me with white hair would be even sexier."

Will groaned. "Still cocky as ever though." She flung ice cream into his face.

He wiped it off and licked his fingers. "Mm, raspberry, perhaps I should eat yours too."

The Willows laughed. "Still trying to get into our knickers?" the vampiress asked.

"Isn't he always?" Will asked.

"I'll get there someday, mark my word." 

"In your dreams."

"So what say we search for the others again? It's been a few centuries since last we looked."

"Whatever you want, Will." Willow licked Will's fingers clean. "Just don't forget about us. We're family these days."

"Even though I haven't let you kill anyone since offing the Master?" Will asked her tone coy.

"Whatever you did to us to make us not want to anymore, worked, so shh, and let me take care of my girl." Willow licked her cool saliva up Will's neck to her ear. "Should we let William watch?"

Will giggled. "Why not. It's as close as he'll ever get to heaven."

* * *

Sunnydale: Modern Times

Angel felt them before he saw them. Vampires, the first he'd encountered since the big change. Buffy felt them too. Her body on alert in that Slayer way for the first time in over a century. 

When Spike and two Willows walked into view, Buffy's jaw dropped and her heart soared. "Willow!"

The two old friends ran to each other, metal parts clinking as they crashed into an embrace. "Buffy!"

Xander heard the commotion and came running. "Willow!"

More metal clanging and hugging. "You changed the world!"

"Oz figured out it was you almost immediately," Angel said. "You're the only other one with a photographic memory. So what's with the vamps?"

"Well, Willow turned Spike into Spike when we first showed up in England. But when we ended up at the end of the Old Ones' reign, I had the time and inclination to tame them. Can't use magic but I was a science girl long before I ever knew magic existed. Where is Oz?"

"Right here." He said from behind Willow.

Their greeting while also an embrace was more subdued. "Missed you wolfy." She kissed his cheek.

"Missed you too."

"Any word on Giles and that Anya person?" Buffy asked.

"No. We were hoping we'd all have the same thought and meet up here today." Will said. "This is the day and place we did the spell that sent us back."

Xander smiled. "I told you she'd think of it!"

"Well we've known each other since kindergarten, Xander. And any time we ever got separated, we met back up where we'd last saw each other." Will punched him in the shoulder. "I'm just glad you didn't forget."

"Never."

"Oh balls, they're all here like you said they would be, Rupes." Anya's venom was undercut with her grin. 

Giles pulled Buffy into his arms first. "How have you been?"

"Things were rough for a while, but Willow here created paradise, so other than missing my friends and family, I've been great." Buffy didn't want to let go.

"Has anyone else noticed that there aren't any shrimp here?" Oz asked.

"You noticed that too?" Will smiled. 

"I figured that out forever ago. It's a dimensional thing." Anya shrugged.

The long lost friends and enemies went to a restaurant to catch up, smiling and laughing the entire time.


End file.
